A Maine Inn With a Storied Past Gets a Modern Makeover

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The Whitehall’s inviting porch offers guests a place to read, rock and sip a cocktail.CreditCreditLark Hotels

By Nina Burleigh

May 6, 2016

Rates

Starting at $159.

Basics

A ship’s captain built this sprawling white mansion with wraparound veranda in 1834, and a young woman who had honeymooned in Camden bought it and turned it into an inn in 1901. Over the years, guests have included elegant summering New Yorkers with retinues traveling north by train, President Bill Clinton and screen and stage stars. The Jazz Age poet Edna St. Vincent Millay was discovered there as a teenager in 1912, reciting her poem “Renascence” to a roomful of well-heeled New Yorkers, according to the hotel. Last June, the newly renovated inn reopened under its latest owner, the Massachusetts-based Lark Hotels, which transformed it into a cool, midcentury-modern homage to cozy New England rusticity.

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CreditLark Hotels

Location

A 10-minute walk from the hotel leads to the quaint center of town, with its touristy chowder houses, T-shirt shops and working harbor, where schooners can be rented to tour Penobscot Bay. Mount Battie, with a hiking trail, is less than a mile from the hotel. Down the coast in Rockland, the Farnsworth Art Museum, home of the Wyeth Center, holds a renowned sampling of American art, and also the second-largest collection of works by the sculptor Louise Nevelson. For Edna St. Vincent Millay fans, the Camden Public Library, a few blocks from the hotel, devotes an entire room to the poet.

The Room

We stayed in a king suite, one of 36 rooms of varying sizes, some with shared bathrooms. Our two rooms with dormer windows were cozy, adjoined by a bathroom. The midcentury-modern and faux rustic theme of the lobby continued in shades of brown, blue and lime green, with hooked rugs. The bed was covered with a simple white comforter, and a pullout couch in the adjoining room was surprisingly comfortable. The property has a modern sensibility, providing Wi-Fi, Apple TV and a digital radio clock by the bed with ports for iPhones, plus an iPad set to things to do in Camden.

Amenities

Screen doors painted dark green led out of the Pig and Poet restaurant onto the veranda, where cushy chairs and couches are arranged. The clubby porch is perfect for curling up with a good book, occasionally looking up to catch lawn games, including an antique shuffleboard court and a modern version of the beanbag toss.

Dining

The restaurant is an airy, indoor room beside a bar lighted by halogen bulbs hanging from ships’ rope. The Pig and Poet offers homey mainstays like buttermilk fried chicken, mac and cheese and, of course, lobster roll, but also more complex dishes like porchetta and egg with their own Asian hot sauce. For dinner, we ordered a half-dozen broiled oysters, which arrived sizzling and drenched in thyme, and the local grilled halibut served with kelp noodle and green papaya. The next morning, a free breakfast was laid out on the bar, small dishes of egg pudding, yogurt, French toast with strawberry sauce and small pastries.

Bottom Line

Sipping a cocktail in a rocking chair on the wide-plank porch and watching children play shuffleboard under the shade of old pines is to be transported to a dreamy postcard summertime of a century ago.

Correction:May 15, 2016

Because of an editing error, the Check In column on May 8, about a Maine hotel, misstated the name of the hotel group that owns the Whitehall. It is the Lark Hotels, not Larkspur.